RANLP (Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing) is one of the most established and competitive NLP conferences. The 8th RANLP conference will be held in Augusta hotel, Hissar, Bulgaria (12-14 September 2011). The conference will take the form of addresses from invited keynote speakers plus presentations of peer-reviewed individual papers. There will also be an exhibition area for poster and demo sessions. The conference will be preceded by two days of tutorials (10-11 September 2011). Post-conference workshops will be held on 15-16 September 2011.

Six pre-conference tutorials will be given on 10-11 September 2011 by the following TUTORIAL SPEAKERS:
Kevin Bretonnel Cohen (University of Colorado School of Medicine)
Patrick Hanks (University of the West of England, Bristol
and University of Wolverhampton)
Erhard Hinrichs (University of Tubingen)
Zornitsa Kozareva (Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California)
& Preslav Nakov (National University of Singapore)
Inderjeet Mani (Children's Organization of Southeast Asia)
Lucia Specia (University of Wolverhampton)

WORKSHOPS 15-16 September 2011: Post-conference workshops will be organised on 15-16 September 2011. The selected workshops will be announced at 28 March 2011 at the conference site.

SUBMISSION of PAPERS, POSTERS, DEMOS
The submission will be maintained by conference management software START, see details at the conference site at http://www.lml.bas.bg/ranlp2011. Submissions should follow strictly the ACL based stylesheets, available at the RANLP 2011 conference site, and should not exceed 8 pages (poster and demo submissions should be no longer than six pages), including cover page, figures, tables and references. Poster and demo papers are presented at the conference in joint poster/demo sessions.

The review process will be anonymous. Double submissions are allowed, but authors will be asked to declare these explicitly. Submissions will be reviewed by at least three members of the Programme Committee. Authors of accepted papers will receive guidelines regarding how to produce camera-ready versions of their papers for inclusion in the proceedings. The full conference proceedings will be distributed at the event. The proceedings will be uploaded at the ACL Anthology shortly after the event.

IMPORTANT DATES
11 April 2011: Abstract submission & registration at START
(not mandatory but would be helpful to plan the review)
18 April 2011: Conference paper submission deadline at START
15 June 2011: Conference paper acceptance notification
20 July 2011: Camera-ready versions of the conference papers at START
20 July 2011: Abstracts for the RANLP 2011 Book of Abstracts at START

LOCATION
RANLP 2011 will be held in AUGUSTA SPA hotel ( http://www.augustaspa.com), Hissar. Hissar or Hisarya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hisarya,_Bulgaria) has been a well-known resort since ancient times; it boasts 22 mineral springs with water temperatures between 37˚C and 52˚C. Archaeological research has revealed that a town existed near the springs 5000 years BC. Many years later Thracians, and after them Romans, settled around the warm springs. The Roman emperor Diocletian visited the town in 293 and built a fortified wall around it. The town was named Diocletianopol. Famous archeological monuments such as the Thracian Tomb of Kazanluk ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thracian_Tomb_of_Kazanlak) and the Tomb at Starosel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starosel) are located within 20-50 km from Hissar.

TRAVEL
Hissar is situated in the centre of Bulgaria, 40 km north of the city of Plovdiv and 160 km east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. Both the International airports of Sofia and Plovdiv can be used as arrival/departure points for RANLP 2011. Ryanair is now operating flights between London Stansted and Plovdiv two times per week. Sofia Airport is connected to Plovdiv via a motorway and it takes only 1 hour and 45 minutes to reach Hissar from Sofia. In addition to the regular public transport (trains and buses), the organisers will provide shuttle minibuses from/to Sofia and Plovdiv airports at an inexpensive rate.